Highway Star - new mix

cincy_kid
thanks for checking it out... glad you liked it.
the vox were fun to TRY to do...


Llarion-
again, glad you liked it...it WAS fun, and quite the challenge...
there's just no way to cop the real sounds, without using the real gear...
and of course, the playing is just a NOD in the direction of the original...
but very worthwhile the excercise, i learned a lot from it, and gained a much deeper appreciation of the original.
 
i compiled some track notes-

for anyone interested:


xeno emailed me the sonar bundle file, via the net. i started from there.
when i was done, i had a 750 meg bundle file, that i simply burned to dvd and snail mailed back to xeno.
i'm still waiting to here HIS mix, and whatever he decides to tweak on it.

the DAW:
it's Sonar 4, running on a PC (dual core, 1 gig ram), thru a Maudio 24/96 card, and this was the very first project i've done with it!
Xenophile (at the planet) asked if i was interested in a collaboration, i said 'sure'--

he programmed the bass and drums, and then played all the key parts, and then we mailed tracks back and forth...
my mix on this sucks, it's definitely a work in progress..
i'm still trying to figure out how to edit autmotation (mix wise).

you know, i played a lot of purple songs when i was young, but never this one..
so, even tho i knew it in my head, i had never bothered to figure out exactly what blackmore was doing during this song, and it was a real learning experience to sit and actually try to pick a few choice things out from what he did.


the guitar parts:
custom strat, into a Mesa Boogie Mark2B 60 watt head (which is an extremely 'organic' amp!), into a 1x12 cab (with a greenback), at4033 at about a foot off the cab, off axis, into the A Designs Audio MP-1, thru a convertor and into sonar via a maudio 24/96 card.
the solos, worked better in the Iso cab, cuz i used a single coil neck pickup, which rounded some of the fuzz off... plus, i just set the amp totally different for those tracks anyway...iso cab has a celestion vintage 30 in it.

i believe i used the Hamburg on the solos.....or maybe 57 on it..i did several takes.

the Vox parts:
Hamburg>>A D audio mp-1>>art convertor>>sonar.

xenophile had another singer that was going to do the vox.... but i'm still learning how to use Sonar, so i figured i'd take a quick stab at the vox... we ended up keeping those vox tracks.

the vox, i did in an hour long session, just kept recording the lead and backups til i got it close, and ran with it..
the lead vox is tracked twice and blended...
the 2nd part harmony, same thing..

i tried to sing the opening banshee part, and my voice kept breaking!!
LOL
i just put on a long delay on my DG stomp, and cranked up the guitar, pre-bent the whammy, hit the high G harmonic, and let the bar up as i brought up the guitar volume.
i did it 4 times, back to back.....

xenophile will explain the keys/drums/bass:

There are keys on the intro now, and I've split the upper and lower organ keyboards to two tracks so they can be panned apart, and they don't both have the same amount of overdrive. What you're hearing right now emulates both of the organ parts going through a single "Lorded out" Leslie.

Programming the drums was quite a challenge. I started out by importing an mp3 of the original tune into Sonar so I could play and record along with it. It became really obvious right away that there are LOTS of tempo variations in the original. I couldn't figure out how to make Sonar track those tempo changes, so I sliced up the original (in some spots one bar at a time) so that it pretty closely lined up with the strict Sonar tempo (not pleasant to listen to any more). Then I played the kick and snare parts on the keyboard along with the original, quantizing as little as possible to keep it in time but still keeping as much human feel as possible. The crash cymbals were played in... I didn't quantize those at all. But I couldn't play the snare and tom fills, so I entered those in Sonar's "Piano Roll" view. Painstakingly... bar by bar, adjusting velocities note by note to match the accents and rolls of the original. The ritard and rolls at the end were the hardest part. I probably spent about 8 hours over 3 or 4 days to finish the drum parts. It was a lot of work, but I'm pretty happy with the result. The samples here are from EZDrummer.

The organ parts were played in real time. That was quite an exercise for my chops. The combination of precision and slop is really important for capturing Lon Lord's feel. It would have sounded too sterile if I had programmed it. I recorded it in two passes, one for the upper keyboard and one for the lower. But the lower part doesn't sound right coming through the same overdriven Leslie as the upper, so I've now split it off to another track and separate instance of the B4 with a little cleaner tone.

I also played in the bass parts... originally intended to be just a scratch track until Gonzo could replace it with a real bass. But the scratch track became a bit of a "hungry monster" itself because I became obsessed with getting all the notes right. I spent a couple hours on it last week, changing the patch and tweaking the midi note timings and velocities in some sections to more closely approximate the way a real bass player would do it, and that seems to be paying off, too.
 
i'm still trying to figure out how to edit autmotation (mix wise).
What in specific?
Right clicking on various areas will lead you to menus specific to the area.
Automating pan,volume,send,etc.,is a breeze.
 
Yeah! Awesome!!

Hey that's awesome! Vocal is just great! Guitar, organ, drums are really really good! Only thing is the bottom end might be just a tad weak, like I can't hear the bass in the verses, maybe the bass is playing that G an octave up? Wow this is great! The best cover I've ever heard on here, well, next to my "whole lotta love".. Haha!

That lead guitar is fantastic!
 
acidrock -

well, with automix, it's easy enough to grab the pan and vol levels, and tweak those...
i want to get into the more advanced automation, using eq and effects and crossfades...

but at this point, i'm lucky to get sound into the pc!!
;)


schenkerguy-
thanks for the kind words..
and yeah! the bass needs tweaking..
ultimately, it's a keyboard bass line, and it sounds so thick, that when i'm mixing it, it sounds too much..
the original bass, that ricky sound, is very plucky and driven and more low-guitar sounding, than bass....
and it's mixed real hot, so it sticks out like a sore thumb! and sounds killer...

so, what i really need to do, is just learn the bass part, re-record it with a real bass, and re-mix it.
i may still try to do that, tho i have a half dozen other projects i've moved on to....
thanks for listening!
 
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